Human Geography Commons^™

3d Tool Evaluation And Workflow For An Ecological Approach To Visualizing Ancient Socio-Environmental Landscapes: A Case Study From Copan, Honduras, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Shona Sanford-Long, Jack Kerby-Miller

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Architectural reconstructions are the centerpieces of ancient landscape visualization. When present, vegetation is relegated to the background, resulting in underutilized plant data—an integral data source for archaeological interpretation—thus limiting the capacity to take advantage of 3D visualization for studying ancient socio-environmental dynamics. Our long-term objective is to develop methods of 3D landscape visualization that have value for examining changes in land use and settlement patterns. To begin to work toward this objective, we have (1) identified 3D tools and techniques for vegetation modeling and landscape visualization, (2) evaluated the pros and cons of these tools, (3) investigated biological and ecological …

Maritime Alpine Cairns In Southeast Alaska: A Multidisciplinary Exploratory Study, William J. Hunt Jr., Ralph J. Hartley, Bruce Mccune, Nijmah Ali, Thomas F. Thornton

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This report describes the goals, data recovery methods, data analysis, and conclusions of a pilot project “A Multidisciplinary Exploratory Study of Alpine Cairns, Baranof Island, Southeast Alaska,” funded by the National Science Foundation under Project No. 1230132. The project brought together experts in the disciplines of archaeology (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), lichenology (Oregon State University), and Tlingit oral history (Oxford University) to address questions regarding artificial prehistoric, high altitude cairns. Data were collected in 2013 and 2014. Pedestrian archaeological inventory recorded 50 cairns at 5 sites. Archaeological data includes cairn dimensions, GPS positions, still photographic images, and video documentation. Four cairns …

The Western Stemmed Point Tradition: Evolutionary Perspectives On Cultural Change In Projectile Points During The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition, Lindsay D. Scott

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this thesis I analyze the cultural techniques of Paleoindians in North America by examining the diversification and fusion of stemmed projectile point traditions using an evolutionary analysis. The Western Stemmed Point tradition has an extensive regional and temporal distribution throughout the Intermountain West and High Plains during the Paleoindian period. In an effort to determine how stemmed projectile point technologies relate to each other, I applied a phylogenetic approach to construct heritable patterns of projectile point histories. By measuring the physical traits of those points and using a macro-evolutionary theoretical approach, changes in artifact form can be acquired and …

Procedural Modeling For Ancient Maya Cityscapes: Initial Methodological Challenges And Solutions, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Rachel Plessing

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Digital reconstruction of 3D cityscapes is expensive, time-consuming, and requires significant expertise. We need a 3D modeling approach that streamlines the integration of multiple data types in a time-efficient and low-cost manner. Procedural modeling—rapid proto-typing of 3D models from a set of rules— offers a potential solution to this problem because it allows scholars to create digital reconstructions that can be quickly updated and used to test and formulate alternative hypotheses that are derived from and linked to underlying archaeological data. While procedural modeling is being used to visualize ancient Roman, Etruscan, and Greek cities, in the Maya region the …

Sacred And Mortuary Landscapes In Iron Age Cyprus: A Gis Analysis, James P. Torpy

Senior Independent Study Theses

During the Archaic period (750-480 BC) the island of Cyprus underwent a dramatic transformation as new city-kingdoms rose to dominate the political landscape of the island. This shift resulted in increased competition for resources, establishment of political boundaries, and emergence of a pronounced social hierarchy within the new polities. While many of the large settlements that became centers of power during this time have been thoroughly studied, the manifestation of the large scale changes of the Archaic in the periphery have not been as fully investigated. The rural site of Athienou-Malloura, surveyed and excavated by the Athienou Archaeological Project …

Advances In Documentation, Digital Curation, Virtual Exhibition, And A Test Of 3d Geometric Morhpometrics: A Case Study Of The Vanderpool Vessels From The Ancestral Caddo Territory, Robert Z. Selden Jr., Timothy K. Perttula, Michael J. O'Brien

CRHR: Archaeology

Three-dimensional (3D) digital scanning of archaeological materials is typically used as a tool for artifact documentation. With the permission of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, 3D documentation of Caddo funerary vessels from the Vanderpool site (41SM77) was conducted with the initial goal of ensuring that these data would be publicly available for future research long after the vessels were repatriated. A digital infrastructure was created to archive and disseminate the resultant 3D datasets, ensuring that they would be accessible by both researchers and the general public (CRHR 2014a). However, 3D imagery can be used for much more than documentation. To …

Welcome Home Ranch Rockshelter: Examinations Of Prehistoric Cultural Transitions In The Palmer Divide, Colorado, Katherine V. Mayo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Welcome Home Ranch rockshelter is located in the Palmer Divide region of Colorado. The archaeological evidence on site suggests that this rockshelter was occupied between the Late Archaic period (c. 1000 BC – AD 150) and Early Ceramic period (c. AD 150- 1150). Excavations at Welcome Home Ranch provided a dataset of lithics, ceramics, and features with which to test ideas about prehistoric life during this transitional time frame between the Archaic stage and the Late Prehistoric stage. It is during this transitional time period, c. AD 150, that the Palmer Divide region and its prehistoric residents experienced a variable …

Jewish Genetic Origins In The Context Of Past Historical And Anthropological Inquiries, John M. Efron

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

The contemporary study of Jewish genetics has a long prehistory dating back to the eighteenth century. Prior to the era of genetics studies of the physical makeup of Jews were undertaken by comparative anatomists and physical anthropologists. In the nineteenth century the field was referred to as “race science.” Believed by many race scientists to be a homogeneous and pure race, Jews occupied a central position in the discourse of race science because they were seen as the control group par excellence to determine the relative primacy of nature or nurture in the development of racial characteristics. In the nineteenth …

No Evidence From Genome-Wide Data Of A Khazar Origin For The Ashkenazi Jews, Doron M. Behar, Mait Metspalu, Yael Baran, Naama M. Kopelman, Bayazit Yunusbayev, Ariella Gladstein, Shay Tzur, Havhannes Sahakyan, Ardeshir Bahmanimehr, Levon Yepiskoposyan, Kristiina Tambets, Elza K. Khusnutdinova, Aljona Kusniarevich, Oleg Balanovsky, Elena Balanovsky, Lejla Kovacevic, Damir Marjanovic, Evelin Mihailov, Anastasia Kouvatsi, Costas Traintaphyllidis, Roy J. King, Ornella Semino, Antonio Torroni, Michael F. Hammer, Ene Metspalu, Karl Skorecki, Saharon Rosset, Eran Halperin, Richard Villems, Noah A. Rosenberg

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

The origin and history of the Ashkenazi Jewish population have long been of great interest, and advances in high-throughput genetic analysis have recently provided a new approach for investigating these topics. We and others have argued on the basis of genome-wide data that the Ashkenazi Jewish population derives its ancestry from a combination of sources tracing to both Europe and the Middle East. It has been claimed, however, through a reanalysis of some of our data, that a large part of the ancestry of the Ashkenazi population originates with the Khazars, a Turkic-speaking group that lived to the north of …

From Generation To Generation: The Genetics Of Jewish Populations, Noah A. Rosenberg, Steven P. Weitzman

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Introduction:

This year marks the 35th anniversary of two noteworthy papers—one in this journal and the other in the American Journal of Human Genetics—posing the same famous question: are the different Jewish populations from around Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa more genetically similar to each other, or are they more similar to the local non-­‐Jewish populations in the regions where they were historically located? Both studies gathered blood-­‐group and protein variation data from a variety of Jewish and non-­‐Jewish populations, compiling significant “classical marker” data sets commensurate with the standard for human population-­‐ genetic studies at the time. …

Genetics And The Archaeology Of Ancient Israel, Aaron J. Brody, Roy J. King

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

This paper is a call for DNA testing on ancient skeletal materials from the southern Levant to begin to database genetic information of the inhabitants of this crossroads region. Archaeologists and biblical historians view the earliest presence in the region of a group that called itself Israel in the Iron I period, traditionally dated to ca. 1200-1000 BCE. These were in villages in the varied hill countries of the region, contemporary with urban settlements in the coastal plains, inland valleys, and central Hill Country attributed to varied indigenous groups collectively called Canaanite. The remnants of Egyptian imperial presence in the …

Genetics And The History Of The Samaritans: Y-Chromosomal Microsatellites And Genetic Affinity Between Samaritans And Cohanim, Peter J. Oefner, Georg Hõlzl, Peidong Shen, Isaac Shpirer, Dov Gefel, Tal Lavi, Eilon Wolf, Jonathan Cohen, Cengiz Cinnioglu, Peter A. Underhill, Noah A. Rosenberg, Jochen Hochrein, Julie M. Granka, Jossi Hillel, Marcus W. Feldman

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

The Samaritans are a group of some 750 indigenous Middle Eastern people, about half of whom live in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, and the other half near Nablus. The Samaritan population is believed to have numbered more than a million in late Roman times, but less than 150 in 1917. The ancestry of the Samaritans has been subject to controversy from late Biblical times to the present. In this study, liquid chromatographyelectrospray ionization quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometry was used to allelotype 13 Y-chromosomal and 15 autosomal microsatellites in a sample of 12 Samaritans chosen to have as …

Intermittence For Humans Spreading 45,000 Years Ago: From Eurasia To The Americas, J. C. Flores

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

From northeastern-Eurasia to the Americas, a three stage spread of Modern Humans is considered through large scale intermittence (exploitation/relocation). Conceptually, this work supports intermittence as a real strategy for colonization of new habitats. For the northeastern Eurasia travel, the first stage, we adapt our model to archaeological dates determining the diffusion coefficient (exploitation phase) as D=299.44 [km²/yr] and the velocity parameter (relocation phase) as v_o=4.8944 [km/yr]. The relative phaseweight (≈ 0.46), between both kind of motions, is consistent with a moderate biological population rate (r'≈ 0.0046 [1/yrs]). The second stage is related to population …

An Environmental And Historical Study Of The Nipomo Mesa Region, Jason C. Carr

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Social Interaction At The Maya Site Of Copan, Honduras: A Least Cost Approach To Configurational Analysis, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

In this article, I employ least cost paths using GIS to measure the relationship between site configuration and social connectivity at the ancient Maya site of Copan, Honduras. I investigate two questions. First, did people of different social classes experience varying degrees of social connectivity? Second, did people living in different parts of the city experience difference degrees of social connectivity? Ultimately, the goal is modify traditional configurational analysis using least cost analysis (LCA) to identify how social hierarchy was embedded in landscapes and how ancient people may have strategically manipulated landscapes to structure social interaction and community organization.

A Landscape Approach To Late Prehistoric Settlement And Subsistence Patterns In The Mojave Sink, Tiffany Ann Thomas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The environment of the Late Prehistoric period (1200 A.D. to Historic Contact) Mojave Sink was wetter than modern conditions. The settlement and subsistence patterns of the occupants of the region during this period were driven by the availability of water, subsistence resources, raw material sources, and tradition. These people utilized the regional landscape based upon the seasonal availability of these resources. Supplemental agricultural production has been proposed for the Mojave River Delta due to the more favorable environmental conditions of this period. If agriculture was being practiced it would have affected the regional land-use patterns. For this thesis I propose …

Arqueología De Un Paisaje Agrícola En La Provincia Yacuma, Departamento Del Beni, Bolivia, John H. Walker

ProSIGAB Documents

No abstract provided.

Review Of Early Prehistoric Agriculture In The American Southwest, By W. H. Wills. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School Of American Research Press, 1988. 196 Pages., Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Last paragraph:

Wills's book provides archeologists with an innovative account of why and how past hunter-gatherers initially expanded their food-getting activities to include the cultivation of domesticated crops. His study makes use of a variety of subjects including r- and K-selection, density-dependent responses, risk minimization, the forager-collector continuum, maize phenology, Holocene environments, technological change, stylistic variation, social boundaries, and mating networks. Wills also offers new information and reassessments of the archeological record at Bat, Tularosa, Cordova, and Cienega Creek caves in the Mogollon highlands. He approaches the archeological literature for the American Southwest with healthy skepticism. And he challenges many …

El Pueblo Guaymí Y Su Futuro, Milton R.A. Machuca-Gálvez, Daniel Holness Carrasco Sr.

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Esta publicación contiene las ponencias y documentos que se presentaron en el FORO SOBRE EL PUEBLO GUAYMÍ SU FUTURO, celebrado en la ciudad de Panamá del 23 al 27 de marzo de 1981. El material está dividido en cinco secciones: una introducción seguida de 1. La historia de los guaymíes; 2. Situación actual del pueblo guaymí; 3 Las luchas guaymíes; 4. Los grandes proyectos de desarrollo: ¿bendición o maldición?; y, 5. "Se hace el camino al andar": pasos en la lucha. Las secciones “guardan una estrecha relación temática con un eje central que aparece a lo largo de la publicación: …